


Immortality

by queenofthorns



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Other, Why does Aragorn keep wearing those gauntlets?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-23 00:06:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3748222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthorns/pseuds/queenofthorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arwen, after Aragorn's death, remembers the shadow of someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Immortality

The tale of his years has drawn to a close. 

King Elessar is grateful that the heirs of Elendil may choose the hour of their death. He is grateful that his queen need not face the stench of sickness and the mortality of his flesh. He is grateful that he will not sink into dotage, to be cared for as an infant, incapable of reason.

He goes to the House of the Kings in the silent street where the living come only on the sufferance of the dead; he lays himself down on the long bed from which he will never rise. His queen is with him, holding his hand against her soft cheek; he can feel her hot tears on his fingers.

They summon Eldarion, and, as always, when Elessar sees his son, his heart swells with pride. This longed-for child is a man now, strong as his father, fair as his mother, beloved by the people. Gondor has a worthy guardian. 

Elessar hands the winged crown and the scepter to his son; when Eldarion bends to kiss his father goodbye, Elessar whispers one final request, though he does not explain why he desires this thing so greatly. What he asks is between himself and another who has long since passed beyond the circles of the world.

One by one, his daughters, his friends, his ministers file past his bed, weeping quietly as they make their final farewells. At last, only Arwen is left by his side. 

“A year,” she says. “That is all I ask. Will you not stay with me for one more spring?”

It is here at last, the bitter future that has always been the price of their joy. She chose this fate when she let the last ship sail into the West, and now her beauty and her sorrow pierce Aragorn’s heart. 

“Would you have me linger until all you remember is a witless old man?” he says, gently. “My time is done, my love; I am weary and would sleep.”

He watches her white throat tighten as she swallows a sob. When she opens those luminous eyes, she gives him a tremulous smile and he lets out the breath he has been holding. She has accepted his decision; he hopes she will accept what he has asked of their son. 

“Evenstar,” he murmurs. “I have loved you since I first saw you. Whatever happens, remember that.”

She stays with him until dusk shrouds the room and then she knows, without his telling, that it is time. 

The dead are courteous; they wait until Arwen has left before they crowd around Aragorn in welcome.

His mother stands beside a dark-haired man, the father Aragorn never knew. “Estel,” she whispers. Aragorn must carry the burden of that word no longer; it is a blessing now, as she meant it to be. 

Beside her are the comrades of his youth, who fell in places of nameless darkness, returned to him smiling and hopeful. There are those whom he met in later days: the Halflings, Merry and Pippin, no longer portly and stolid in velvet waistcoats, but once again the laughing young esquires of Rohan and of Gondor; Theoden and Eomer, unbent and unbroken; Faramir is there, untouched by sickness; and Eowyn, whose hair is a river of gold, changed back from the fragile silver of her last years. 

All his beloved dead are with him, all save the Ringbearers, who sailed to Valinor. And one other, the Lord of Gondor who died untimely, before he could see that Aragorn kept his oaths.

There is a flash of bright hair in the far corner of the room, and Aragorn sees Boromir lagging behind the others, as if unsure of his welcome. He is not as Aragorn remembers him, has remembered him for years beyond counting, ashen in death, his rich clothes stained with sweat and blood. He shines in white armor emblazoned with the White Tree; his eyes are clear and free of doubt and the dark visions of the Ring. 

When Aragorn stretches out his hands, Boromir’s smile lights the room. In three long strides, he is beside Aragorn. “My king, my captain, my brother,” he says, and his eyes are bright as emeralds, “Long have I awaited thee!”

He kisses Aragorn’s forehead, and the sliver of ice that has been lodged in Aragorn’s heart for so long melts in a blaze of light.

***

When Eldarion sees the smile on the King’s face, he knows that his father was joyful in death, and this thought somehow comforts him. The King was, he thinks, happy, and unfailingly kind and gracious, but always reserved, as though he could not surrender to pure delight.

Eldarion wonders if it was the burden of Kingship, and whether he too will withdraw behind the ramparts and high towers of his office. They call his parents the second Beren, a latter-day Luthien; it has not been easy to be their son. There are no great deeds for him to accomplish, but only the stewardship of what Elessar has already won.

He sighs, remembering what he has promised his father. He finds the small wooden box, exactly as the King described; inside lie a pair of ancient vambraces. The leather is cracked, the silver inlay faded and rubbed away in places so only a ghostly outline of the White Tree remains. There are dark stains, blood or sweat, reminders of battles long since decided, for ill or good, of men long since gone down into shadow.

The Queen starts when she sees the gauntlets on the King’s body. He wonders whether she recognizes them or whether it is only the contrast to the King’s rich silk and fur that she finds unseemly. He dares not ask; her eyes are flooded with tears, her fine features blurred, as though she has drawn a grey veil of grief over them.

After the ceremonies, she tells him where she is going, and that none may follow, though he catches her hand and begs her to remain.

“I could never bear it,” she says, smoothing the hair from his forehead, “to see you and your sisters so.”

The King’s death has made him doubly an orphan. And yet, he cannot begrudge his mother this final journey.

***

Her father was right, Arwen thinks. The lives of men are but candles that burn down in a single night, leaving only darkness in their wake. He had warned her of the price she would pay for her mortal life; now she wonders whether she should not, after all, have taken the ship to Valinor. 

Sorrow encases her like ice; she fears the salt tears of her children will break her in two. When she pulls back her veil and bends to bid Aragorn a last farewell, she sees what he wears on his arms.

In the first year of his kingship, when gray winter hovered on the verge of spring, Aragorn spoke to her of Boromir. It seemed to Arwen that a distant horn call echoed in the stones of Minas Tirith as her husband told her of the promise he had made to a dying man. He showed her the gauntlets, worn and bloodied - his blood or Boromir’s, it made no difference.

“There is loss in every victory,” she said, thinking of her final parting from her father.

“ _I_ lost him,” Aragorn said. “I should have seen the signs.”

“You shall see him again.” Arwen stroked Aragorn’s hair from his brow, looked deep into his eyes, willing him to believe this. “It is the gift given to Men.”

“Perhaps,” said Aragorn, laying the gauntlets by, garments of war, unneeded in peacetime. He never spoke of his comrade again.

Arwen scarcely remembered Boromir, who had come to seek counsel in her father’s house, and who had, instead, born his doom away within him. And yet he had touched Aragorn greatly, and she wished to know what manner of man he had been. 

She questioned Faramir and the Halflings, so subtly they never guessed what she sought. She learned Boromir like a puzzle whose pieces did not fit together – he was bold and vain, great-hearted and selfless, Gondor’s champion who would have destroyed his city, all the while thinking to serve it. He was the man who saved Elessar, and he was the man whom Elessar could not save.

Over the years, as her children were born, she forgot her interest in the mad Steward's dead son. If Aragorn seemed a little withdrawn each year at beginning of spring, she thought it merely the cares of the realm, that weighed on him heavier after a winter's darkness. 

But now, looking down at Aragorn’s body, she knows the truth at last.

Her father was wrong; men’s lives are like wavering candles, but their love is a steady flame that lights the long ages, and death does not diminish it.

She will go now to the dying woods in Lorien, and lay herself down on the green hill where she first met Aragorn. When that last sleep takes her, she will find them both; fair and dark, they will stand together to greet her, and she will take their hands and pass out of the circles of the world.


End file.
